Assignment Guidelines
Chapter 8 – Artificial Intelligence (Ai) in Your Education and Assessment: Acceptable Usage Guide
- Chapter 1 – Assignment Briefs
- Chapter 2 – House Style & Formatting
- Chapter 3 – Assignment Length
- Chapter 4 – Referencing
- Chapter 5 – File Naming and Labelling
- Chapter 6 – Accepted File Types for Submission
- Chapter 7 – How to Submit your Assignment, Technical Advice & Late Penalties
- Chapter 9 – Academic Misconduct
8.1 Introduction
We believe Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are potentially transformative as well as disruptive, that they will feature in many academic and professional workplaces, and that rather than seek to prohibit your use of them, we will support you in using them effectively, ethically and transparently.
The assignment brief should give more specific guidance on what AI tools, if any, are allowed in the context of your own assignments, but the following guidance applies across all Leeds Conservatoire assessments. If unsure of your AI usage on an assignment, consult with your module tutors.
8.2 AI and academic misconduct
It is not acceptable to use AI tools to write your assignment from start to finish. The unacknowledged or not permitted use of AI tools is considered contract cheating: “to seek to gain advantage by incorporating material in work submitted for assessment that has been improved by, or commissioned, purchased or obtained from a third party”.
In addition, words and ideas generated by some AI tools make use of people’s ideas without referencing them, which is considered a form of plagiarism.
If teaching staff suspect that you are trying to misrepresent AI-generated output as your own work then you may find yourself under investigation for academic misconduct in accordance with the University of Hull Regulations Governing Academic Misconduct.
8.3 Use of AI in assessment and learning
When approaching your learning, it could be useful to think about AI use in two stages:
- Explore, experiment, and prepare
- Execute, deliver and finalise
You are permitted to use AI in stage 1.
You are not permitted to use AI in stage 2.
The table below is designed to clarify which activities fall within each of these stages and to offer guidance on the effective, ethical, and transparent use of AI in your working process.
Using AI in stage 1 could usefully supplement and support your learning and help to overcome challenges you maybe facing in your working process.
Using AI in stage 2 will limit the expression of your own genuine ideas; negatively impact your learning, knowledge, and experience; and would constitute academic misconduct.
| Stage 1: Explore, experiment, and prepare |
| Initial exploration of a topic/style/process |
| Location of sources and references |
| Organisation of notes and materials |
| To explore ways to move your own ideas forward. For instance, if you experience a block in your thinking |
| Making materials more accessible: transcription, translation and reading aids |
| Review of spelling, grammar and language style |
| Stage 2: Execute, deliver, and finalise |
| Generating / composing the fundamental elements, arguments or ideas of your work |
| Writing final submitted materials |
| Composing wholly or in part material submitted as part of an assessment for which AI is not explicitly authorised |
| Generating audio or other media for final submission |
| Using AI to translate part or all of the final submitted work into English |
| Generating or substituting whole phrases, sentences or composition with generated material |
8.3.1 Examples of AI use in stage 1 and Stage 2
Stage 1: Explore, experiment, and prepare: Permitted Use
| Activity / Use | Example |
| Initial exploration of a topic/style/process | If researching a musical style, you could use a generative AI tool (such as Suno) to produce a song that contains the musical characteristics of a specific musical style. In a research context you could ask AI to identify the most important sources in a field of study. |
| Location of sources and references. | To gather a list of illustrative sources from a specific musical style. To generate a list of authoritative sources in a subject area. Note: AI is known to hallucinate or fabricate sources and ideas and to present false information as if it were true sources that don’t exist. Therefore, students must not accept AI’s outputs to be consistently truthful. |
| Organisation of notes and materials. | If researching a musical style, you could use a generative AI tool (such as Suno) to produce a song that contains the musical characteristics of a specific musical style. Transferring rough lecture notes into more coherent and usable material. |
| To explore ways to move your own ideas forward | Generating audio or other media for final submission |
| Making materials more accessible: transcription, translation and reading aids | Using AI to translate part or all of the final submitted work into English |
| Review of spelling, grammar and language style | Generating or substituting whole phrases, sentences or composition with generated material. |
Stage 2: Execute, deliver, and finalise: Not Permitted
| Activity / Use | Example |
| Generating / composing the fundamental elements, arguments or ideas of your work | You ask AI to formulate an argument through combining key theories as required by an assessment brief. This argument would have been synthesised by the AI and not by you. |
| Drafting final submitted materials | Putting all your notes into a Gen AI and asking it to write it up into a full piece of work. |
| Composing wholly or in part material submitted as part of an assessment for which AI is not explicitly authorised | Prompting Gen AI to compose materials that you integrate into or form the entirety of a piece of work and present as your own ideas. |
| Using AI to translate part or all of the final submitted work into English | Inputting your writing composed in another language into an AI and instructing it to translate into English. Translation is not a direct 1-to-1 conversation process and GEN AI will fabricate new ideas and language that does not appear in your original writing. All work conducted on LC programmes must be completed in English. |
| Generating audio for final submission | Using audio: Instrumentation or vocals generated by AI (such as Suno) and including any of these elements in a recorded submission would not be permitted. Unless otherwise stipulated using copyright free loops /samples and supportive elements such as Drummer in Logic and similar tools in DAWs are considered appropriate and reflects industry standard practice. |
| Generating or substituting whole phrases, sentences or compositions with generated material | A tool has rewritten a whole sentence. For example, we asked AI to rewrite the following: Can you rewrite this phrase: Generating or substituting whole phrases, sentences or composition with generated material. Response Sure! Here are a few reworded versions of the phrase: 1. “Creating or replacing entire phrases, sentences, or texts with generated content.” 2. “Using generated material to construct or substitute full expressions, sentences, or written pieces.” 3. “Producing or swapping out complete linguistic units— such as phrases or sentences—with generated alternatives.” 4. “Employing generated content to form or replace whole segments of writing.” |
8.3.2 Additional Guidance
Although this guidance has outlined some examples of how AI can be used in your working process, it is essential that students review and critically assess the relevance, quality, and suitability of materials generated by AI. Students are ultimately responsible for their own working process and the quality of materials used. AI is known to hallucinate or fabricate sources and ideas and to present false information as if it were true (including sources that don’t exist). Therefore, students must not accept AI’s outputs to be consistently truthful. Although we have given examples of specific AI platforms and how they could be used, Leeds Conservatoire does not endorse or recommend the use of these platforms.
8.4 Transparency and acknowledgement
If the assignment brief has made it clear that you may use AI sources or tools in your assessed work, then you should acknowledge, describe and reference its use:
- Acknowledge and Describe: acknowledge its use and describe how the information or material was generated
The acknowledgement and description should be featured at the start of your work, it will not be included in your word count. - Reference: reference where information provided by an AI tool is included in an assessment just as you would with any other source.
NB: Referencing AI tools for facts without examining and referencing other sources is considered poor academic practice and may impact your mark.
8.5 Example of how to acknowledge, describe and reference
Acknowledgement and Description of Use:
I acknowledge the use of ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/) to plan my essay, and generate some initial ideas which I used in background research and self-study in the drafting of this assessment.
In text citation:
“Britpop left a lasting impact on British music and culture. It celebrated a sense of national identity and nostalgia, with bands often referencing British life and themes in their lyrics” (ChatGPT, 2023).
Bibliography:
Communicator (Year) Description of communication [Communication type]. Prompted by name/handle (if not self). Date and time of communication.
e.g:
ChatGPT (2023) History of britpop [AI generated text]. Prompted by Mark Sturdy. 18 April 2023, 15:10.